Sorrow-be-gone

vol Daniel Steegmann Mangrané 66 no 6 Brazil 104 ArtReview

The American musician and artist discusses how he was drawn into the world of blocos afros, carnavalescos and Bahian carnival in general, and into a collaboration with Matthew Barney along the way

Interview by Tobi Maier

September 2014 105 In 1978, American-born guitarist Arto Lindsay making it happen. That was my real hands-on comissão de frente that open the parade. That’s cofounded the band DNA, which remains training. His group is an interesting combina- in Rio. In Bahia it’s not quite so formalised, very influential within the noise-music scene; tion of a traditional afoxé, a carnival group but there are key figures, like Pitta, Vovô, who he went on to play as part of that is connected to a terreiro, or Candomblé is the head of Ilê Aiyê, and João Jorge, who runs and , formed Ambitious temple [Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion Olodum. Even though they don’t act as carnaval- Lovers, produced tracks for , that originated during the nineteenth century escos, they conduct the carnival. And all of them , and David and incorporates a mixture of various tradi- are connected to a terreiro. I began to see these Byrne, and collaborated with many other musi- tional African beliefs with some aspects of guys as real artists, in the same way as opera or cians. As it is in a band, collaboration seems Catholicism], and has an open, innovative movie directors, because they control so many key to his work in the context of art – ‘parade approach. Pitta himself is an artist. The roots aspects of this incredible experience – music, projects’, such as De Lama Lâmina (2004, with of the Black Bahian carnival are the afoxés. dancing, narrative – and it’s all so visual. When Matthew Barney) during the carnival in Bahia, These are profane manifestations of the you parade for four or five hours, it’s a trans- I Am a Man (Portikus, Frankfurt, 2008), Multi- Candomblé temples. The afoxés were a local formative experience, it’s ritualistic in the natural (Blackout) (Venice Biennale, 2009), The neighbourhood tradition, and these blocos afros broadest sense of the term. You come out dif- Penny Parade (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, grew from them. They were formed as a direct ferently on the other side. I wanted to bring this 2009), Somewhere I Read (Performa, New York, result of segregation. Black people were not into the artworld, to bring it into the critical 2009) and Paper Rain (Art Basel Hong Kong, 2013), allowed to join existing carnival groups, so sphere of the artworld. At a certain point during as well as his performance contribution to last they started their own. The liberation move- the 1990s – roughly when I started going to year’s 33rd Panorama da Arte Brasileira in São ments in Africa, the civil rights movements in the carnival in Bahia – I also stepped out of Paulo. The main character of De Lama Lâmina is America and the black power and negritude the music world, at least socially, because I was the Greenman. In the parade, roots extended tired of the conversations around music and from his mouth and anus (in the filmed version, Novelty is part of the I was drawn to art. Art criticism was mixed they eventually bloom). The Greenman is a ‘large- with philosophy; people took discussions more machinery fetishist’ and rode in a tinted-glass charm of carnival, carnival seriously. And I wanted to bring this loose but compartment mounted under the logging truck. is about memory and information-packed experience of a carnival As the truck drove, he masturbated continuously nostalgia as well as about parade into an art context, and have art people against the drive shaft, climaxing multiple look at it and therefore transform it within times. In the film he interacts with an anima- innovation. My music is another context. tronic golden lion tamarin (an endangered noisy, spiky, abrasive, but it’s Ar How was your own musical history perceived monkey native to the area whose faeces is used also very rhythmic, during these carnival collaborations? in the production of some antibiotics), using its excrement to lubricate the drive shaft. so it was not difficult for me AL My music was perceived as a novelty, but novelty is part of the charm of carnival, carnival Artreview There has been a long tradition of to communicate with the is about memory and nostalgia as well as about parades by artists – one thinks of Dadaists, Futurists musicians at all. I was innovation. My music is noisy, spiky, abrasive, and Constructivists, for example – but how did you accepted. The Bahian but it’s also very rhythmic, so it was not difficult become interested in using this medium? audiences are sort of like for me to communicate with the musicians at Arto LiNDsAy When I started to make parades all. I was accepted. The Bahian audiences are as a kind of performance, I figured that artists CBGB audiences: sort of like the CBGB audiences: they talk back. had already made parades – like the way that they talk back They were ready for me. I started playing assuming that other Matthew and I were both insiders and people had already done something similar, movements from the 1960s inspired them. outsiders. We had a big samba group playing assuming there were free guitarists out Pitta’s group was founded as a bloco afro, very with my own band, we had songs that people there somewhere without knowing anything self-consciously African influenced. could sing along with as well as throwing in about them. But the direct inspiration for my a lot of stranger musical elements. It was not Ar How did you develop your connection with Brazil parades came from carnival in Brazil. While a completely foreign body – just a new wrinkle and when did you start travelling to Bahia? living in New York and working regularly in on a tradition in constant change. And people Brazil as a record producer, I started to go to AL I spent carnival in Salvador from the early trying to outdo each other. Remember that carnival in Bahia every year, and I became really 1990s till 2005 or 2006. I lived in Salvador be- the samba reggae rhythm itself that Olodum involved with several different carnival groups tween 2004 and 2008, having moved there after formalised was adopted by Paul Simon, who and ended up working on parades and pro- the De Lama Lâmina parade. As I began to grasp then played it all over the world; Michael ducing records for several of the blocos afros some ideas of the history of the carnival in Bahia Jackson did a video there. So there is [Afro-rooted carnival groups]. I also became and in Rio, I realised that it’s the carnavalescos, of outsiders getting involved. interested in the history of carnival in Bahia. the people who are hired by the samba schools Ar Documentary footage of De Lama Lâmina Eventually I conceived a parade there with in Rio, who design the parade. The school was later turned into a 35mm film that depicts your Matthew Barney, in 2004. We had no trouble chooses a theme, a song is selected and then it’s trio elétrico, a parade car designed by Barney inserting our avant-garde noisy style of perfor- the carnavalesco’s job to visualise that. He works and integrating the Cortejo Afro percussion group mances into the entertainment and traditional with costume designers, he divides the parades and dancers, as well as other guest percussionists context of carnival. I worked as a director with into the different allegorical groups that sym- and carnival singers. Next to the trio a lone figure was a group called Cortejo Afro run by Alberto Pitta. bolise the various aspects of the theme, he works balancing on top of a tree – the American ecological A small group of us were doing all the work, with the designers who build the floats and the

106 ArtReview this page, both images Bloco Cortejo Afro, Salvador, Bahia, 28 February 2014. Photo: Rosilda Cruz/SecultBA

opening pages Matthew Barney with Arto Lindsay, De Lama Lâmina (2004), performance documentation. Photo: Chris Winget. © Matthew Barney. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York & Brussels

September 2014 107 activist Julia Butterfly Hill. A Greenman, who then a truck carrying a shipping container has theatre played in your education, and how does performed near the mechanical shaft of the cart, covered with mud that the musicians were on, it serve as a template for the parades? accompanied her and the trio. Can you tell me how then the 30 percussionists and another sound AL A parade is a public event, the parade form you came to the collaboration with Barney and car in the back. The dancers moved around, precedes all this theory and discourse about how the work was conceived and unfolded? What between and behind the vehicles. I wrote songs public space. You know what to do when you see was the reason for its ecological theme? for the band to play in the parade, and we a parade, every child knows what to do, you clap, repeated them so the audience could learn AL Matthew and I had been talking about you dance to the music, you watch all the weird them and sing along. collaborating for a while. We had considered or beautiful or impressive go by. And in Brazil, One of the things I am proudest of is that and discarded some ideas. He had already of course, we are well schooled in carnival and the musicians on the truck and the musicians on done a parade at the Boijmans Van Beuningen people are ready to cut loose. the street played in time together. We rehearsed [Rotterdam], in 1995, which was based on the Carnival is an extreme experience, or at with the drummers and found that they would first instalment [number four in the numerical least it represents extreme experience, and play a particular rhythm at a particular tempo, sequence] of The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002). people are willing to accept strange new things. and we adjust to them. Those of us on top of the And I was involved in Bahia. At some point So you see carnival is not exactly collective truck blasted the drum machine and the voice it struck us that a parade was a perfect way euphoria. It’s a collective experience that allows directly at the percussion. A conductor standing to work together. He came to Bahia and we for euphoria, and wonder and even boredom. at the back of the truck conveyed cues… it started to plan a parade. I introduced Matthew Doing something – be it doing a dance move worked. This was a first in Bahian carnival, into the Candomblé cosmology. He was inter- or singing a song or just walking – with a large and no one has managed it since. On the street, ested in men and machines, and, being in Brazil, crowd of people is both an intense pleasure bloco afro play slow so people get sexy. If you in ecology. He became attracted to Ogum, a and a chance for reflection. play fast, people will get rowdy and eventually Candomblé deity who is the blacksmith, the When I started making music I was reading violent. Bloco afro tempo is about dignity, adult god of machinery, the god of weapons. Like a bit of Brecht and I was enamoured of the avant- sexuality and display. much in Candomblé, iron is an ambiguous garde theatre in New York. I had studied theatre element; you can construct with it but you Ar I am interested in this kind of hypostasis, or the in college, and performed Caliban in a play where can also make destructive weapons out of it. shared existence of spiritual or corporeal entities, and director Ward Shelley, now a New York artist, Another reference was Osain, the god of plants how theatre expands into public space. References that combined Shakespeare’s The Tempest with J.G. and the forest. We talked about all this with come to mind when we are talking about parades and Ballard’s novel The Drought. That was in 1972 or Alberto Pitta. Matthew designed the car processions include Bertolt Brecht’s plays. What role ’73 in Florida. When DNA started I had these and the costumes, and brought in the ideas about alienation, about not wanting idea of inviting Julia Butterfly. to play a particular role in order to act as First he wanted to get one of those a rock musician. I wanted to be able to monster cars with the huge wheels. Then step in and out of the role. Getting overly he came across a mining machine with expressionistic in one song and then being huge claws to dig its way through the flat, being direct with the audience and earth and ended up using that. Matthew then ignoring them, switching between had the idea to combine the machines a male and a female voice: ideas that came with vegetation and with people – we from theatre. And I was excited by Chris had a guy underneath the truck, trying Burden and Vito Acconci’s confrontational to have sex with the drive shaft. performances, and by Yvonne Rainer’s I wanted to have four separate sound ideas. I had seen Grand Union [the dance cars surrounding the participants in group originated by Rainer] while in order to have the sound coming from college and that was super-impressive, several sources. Loud but less distorted. all these great choreographers impro- The street however was too narrow for vising, just amazing. I saw a lot of Richard the vehicles, and so in the end we Foreman’s work. Obviously when you stretched the sound out and had the make a parade you can see it like theatre or sound cars in a long row so music could like a movie, a succession of scenes. Or you hop back and forth between the front can also loosen up your metaphor and see and rear of the parade. So: a sound car it like a book, each group in a parade being in front, then the big mining vehicle, a different chapter. Or like a song. ar

Arto Lindsay, Parada Pedra, 2013. Photo: Ricardo Amado. Courtesy Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo

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